1. Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to supply chain management. More specifically, the embodiments of the invention relate to analysis of stock differences within a supply chain.
2. Background
In supply chain management processes stock differences may occur or can be determined in different contexts, for example, when goods are moved within the warehouse, during physical inventory, during a quality inspection process, and/or resulting against the delivering facility claims from a customer or another facility in the supply chain. This may occur, for example, where the existing record shows X units of a product in bin A and during physical inventory, it is found that Y units are in bin A. These differences may be positive or negative. Commonly, these differences are initially posted on the local level, such as the warehouse management system which eventually must be reconciled to a host reporting system, such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or advanced planning optimizer (APO) system, such as available from SAP AG of Walldorf, Germany. Only after posting to the reporting system are global adjustment of the inventory levels made that can influence global operations, for example, an available to promise (ATP) check.
It is also desirable to minimize the number of postings to the recording system as such postings are reflected on a company's financial statements. Thus, if in the example above the difference between X and Y can be reconciled, such as an adjacent bin expected to have Y units actually has X units of the same product, reconciliation can occur on a local level without a posting to the host system.